


The (Second) Christmas Party That (Officially) Never Happened

by afteriwake



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Christmas Party, Drinking, Drunk Phil Coulson, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Nick Fury Swears, One-Sided Attraction, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, POV Melinda May, Phil Coulson & Melinda May Friendship, Poetry, Pre-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 20:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5347739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two Christmas parties that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents deny ever happened: the Christmas party of 1945 and the Christmas party of 1997. The events chronicled below are what happened to one agent during the party of 1997.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The (Second) Christmas Party That (Officially) Never Happened

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm altering the prompt for Day 3 of my [Christmas Fic Countdown](http://penaltywaltz.tumblr.com/post/134408122533/christmas-fic-countdown-2015) (" _'we’re co workers who hate each other but you had too much to drink at the staff christmas party and admitted your love for me i don’t know how to act around you now'_ ") just a _teeny_ bit. It's canon that Melinda, prior to 2008, was a prankster, so instead of them "hating each other" I'm going with "highly annoy each other at times." As I haven't gotten to see season 2 or 3 yet and therefore haven't seen Andrew, I'm relying on the MCU Wiki for information and it doesn't give specific dates for when she met Coulson or when she married Andrew (or which happened first), so for the purposes of this fic she met Coulson before she met and married Andrew. The two poems used in the fic are "A Drinking Song" by W. B. Yeats and "We Are Made One with What We Touch and See" by Oscar Wilde.

Okay. So _maybe_ she had a habit of pulling pranks on people a bit too often. She could accept that. And _maybe_ she shouldn’t have programmed Coulson’s cell phone to play “Yankee Doodle Dandy” every time he got a call or a text without him being able to change it back; that had gotten pretty annoying pretty quickly. But it had been six months and she was _still_ trying to get payback for her ending up in the bay in Sausalito for five hours while he took his sweet time getting her out.

She would put up with a lot of things, but not that.

She opened the door to her locker in the locker room. She didn’t want to go to the stupid Christmas party. The _only_ reason she was going was because Barton had said he’d spike the punch with 100 proof rum and Natasha said _she’d_ spike it with 100 proof rum and she was pretty sure neither of them had told the other their plans. It was going to be a train wreck of epic proportions and it was better than sitting in her apartment in Georgetown watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” with a pint of Cherry Garcia and takeout from the place in Logan Circle with the secret “ma la” menu that was mouth numbingly spicy.

Besides, for once if the prank backfired it wouldn’t be her fault, so she’d get to see all the fun it caused and take none of the blame.

Her pranks were always good-natured and fun. Usually they were supposed to make everyone laugh. Their job was so serious that it was good to have some levity every once in a while. She saw what being in the intelligence community had done to her mother at times. She saw how important it was to keep a sense of humor about things. And most agents, they appreciated it, even if they were on the receiving end of the prank.

Except Coulson.

He was such a stick in the mud sometimes.

He took the job more seriously than most. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d come out of the womb dressed in a suit and tie. He seemed to live eat and breathe the job. Well, that and all things WWII era stuff. His obsession with that era was…weird. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had Captain America stashed in a walk-in freezer in his basement or something. But she couldn’t fault him too much; it had gotten him pretty far at S.H.I.E.L.D., being Fury’s right-hand man and all. But still. She’d honestly be surprised if they ever got along.

She gave herself one last look in the mirror in her locker. She wasn’t quite the mistress of seduction that Natasha was; after all, there was a _reason_ the woman was known as the Black Widow. But she could make herself look attractive enough when the occasion called for it. Not that she really wanted to catch anyone’s eye here. She had a pretty straightforward policy about dating fellow agents: she didn’t. It was too messy. There was too much of a chance that things would get awkward if they went south.

And, knowing the job and all it entailed, that was a pretty big chance.

When she was satisfied that she looked as good as she was going to look, she made her way to the area where the party was being held, the Triskelion’s entryway. It was one of the largest open areas in the building, and it was far away from offices and any restricted areas that people with certain clearance levels shouldn’t go. That made it easier for security to keep them all contained. As she got further into the crowd of agents she could see the Barton/Romanov double act of doctoring the punch had apparently already taken place, as many of the agents appeared _quite_ plastered. This was going to be _very_ amusing, she thought to herself.

“This your doing?” she heard a gruff voice ask from her left.

She shook her head before turning to face Fury. “For once, not my idea,” she said with a grin. “I just got here, actually. I was kept doing paperwork on the Vienna mission.”

Fury eyed her. “But you know who did,” he said.

Melinda kept an impassive look on her face. “I might.”

He kept quiet for a moment, and then sighed. “Why in the fuck did I ever let Barton bring her in?” he said, hanging his head.

Melinda laughed. “He did it too,” she said.

“I should have known,” he said. “I’m going to kill them both. _After_ I get the damn doctored punch out of here before someone does something _real_ stupid.”

“Good luck,” she said, watching him turn and walk away before looking around. She saw familiar faces, friendly faces, and she was making her way towards John Garrett when suddenly Coulson was in her way. He was staring at her with an unusually dopey grin. She stared at him strangely. “Coulson.”

“Melinda!” he said, his grin growing wider. “Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye; that’s all we shall know for truth before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh.” He lifted up his glass and took a drink, finishing it off. “Yeats.”

She groaned. Damn. Coulson was an introspective drunk, and he’d zeroed in on her. Hopefully he stayed in a happy mood if he was going to _stay_ around her. “Maybe you should not have any more punch, Coulson,” she said.

“Dance with me, May,” he said, setting the empty glass on a nearby table.

She eyed him warily. “Why?” she asked.

“Letting bygones be bygones,” he said.

She hesitated and then moved closer. Why the hell not? It was Christmas. She could hold up the white flag of truce for the holiday. “Fine. One dance,” she said as a slow song started. They moved over onto the dance floor and he pulled her closer. She had to admit, even three sheets to the wind he had some moves. It wasn’t so bad, she thought as she relaxed and started to enjoy herself.

“We are resolved into the supreme air,” Coulson said quietly, breaking her out of her reverie. “We are made one with what we touch and see, with our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair, with our young lives each spring-impassioned tree. Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range. The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.”

“What are you doing?” she asked, pulling away slightly to look at him, her eyes growing wide.

“With beat of systole and of diastole one grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, and mighty waves of single Being roll from nerve-less germ to man, for we are part of every rock and bird and beast and hill, one with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill….” The volume of his voice increased as he spoke and she realized people were starting to stare. She was going to kill him. And then she was going to kill Natasha and Barton, too, for good measure. She tried to pull away but he kept her close. “One sacrament are consecrate, the earth not we alone hath passions hymeneal, the yellow buttercups that shake for mirth at daybreak know a pleasure not less real than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood we draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good....”

“Coulson!” she hissed, starting to struggle with him. If he’d planned this to humiliate her then damn him, he was succeeding. She could feel more eyes on them and she wanted to hurt him. Oh, she was going to get him back so bad.

“Is the light vanished from our golden sun, or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair, that we are nature's heritors, and one with every pulse of life that beats the air?” he asked. “Rather new suns across the sky shall pass, new splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. And we two lovers shall not sit afar, critics of nature, but the joyous sea shall be our raiment, and the bearded star shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be part of the mighty universal whole, and through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!”

Finally she managed to get out of his arms and she turned on heel, stalking away from him. The crowd parted for her and she was glad for that. She had never been more humiliated in her life. She just wanted to sink into the floor and not show her face anywhere in the Triskelion for the next twenty years. There was silence for a moment, and then she felt a hand grab her wrist. She whirled around and saw Coulson looking at her, almost like a puppy who’d had his nose swatted with newspaper. And then it hit her: he hadn’t set this up to humiliate her.

He was spouting love poetry at her because he actually _meant_ it. She stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed as the realization hit her. “Phil…” she said quietly.

“We shall be notes in that great Symphony,” he said quietly, looking her in the eyes, “whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, and all the live World's throbbing heart shall be one with our heart, the stealthy creeping years have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, the Universe itself shall be our Immortality.”

She nodded slightly and then looked over at him before pulling her arm free. “I…I need to go,” she said. And then she turned again, making her way outside, heading towards her car. This was a lot to think about, a lot more than what she had thought would happen tonight. A lot more than she had _ever_ expected.

And she needed quiet and solitude to sort things out.

**\---**

She wasn’t surprised to see the memo when she went in the next morning, that officially, no one was to mention the events of the party the night before. There must have been a lot more hijinks that happened after she left, she realized.

She tapped her pen on her desk as she tried to figure out how to broach things to Coulson. _Technically_ she didn’t have to since _technically_ , according to Fury they weren’t supposed to. And really, it would be easier if they didn’t. But they should. But before she could get up the nerve he came up to her desk, looking for all the world like he had the worst hangover in the world. “May,” he said.

“Coulson,” she said, giving him a nod.

He looked over at her. “About last night…” he said.

She shook her head. “You don’t need to explain,” she said, wanting to give him an out. “Two bottles of 100 proof rum in the punch. It’ll do that.”

He studied her and then nodded. There seemed to be a sense of relief that settled over him as he gave her a small grin. “Got to hand it to Barton and Romanoff. That’s only the second S.H.I.E.L.D. Christmas party that’s ever never officially happened.”

Melinda leaned back in her chair. “There was another one?”

Coulson gestured towards her desk and Melinda nodded, and so he sat down on the edge of it. “Apparently Howard Stark knew how to throw one hell of a party back in the day for the very first S.H.I.E.L.D. Christmas party. There almost wasn’t a second.”

“And just how did you come about this information?” Melinda asked with a smile.

“Do you really want to know?” he asked.

Melinda nodded. “Yeah. I really want to know.”

Coulson’s grin got wider. “Well, I’m kind of a history buff, and I got access to some special files and there were some personal notes from Director Carter and…” He went off to tell the story and Melinda listened, enjoying the story. Whether Coulson really did have romantic feelings towards her or not didn’t matter; at the very least, for the moment, they could at least start to have a good friendship. Whether it ever led to something else…who knew? They’d just have to wait and see what the future held.


End file.
